00:00Durbin for his opening remarks and after that Senator Cornyn is going to take the chair and
00:06Senator Cornyn and Chairman Schmidt are going to lead the rest of the hearing. Proceed Senator Durbin.
00:17Thank you Chairman Grassley. This committee has oversight responsibility over the Department of
00:24Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Homeland Security.
00:30We have a constitutional duty to hold these agencies accountable with public hearings.
00:37By this date in my first year as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, we had already held two
00:43major oversight hearings with Biden administration agency heads, including one with the FBI Director
00:51Wray on domestic terrorism threats. So far this year, the Republican majority on this committee has not
00:59held a single oversight hearing, despite numerous critical challenges facing the nation that are
01:06under our jurisdiction. In the last week alone, several events have demanded this committee's
01:12immediate attention. The horrific assassination in Minnesota, the treatment of our colleague
01:19Senator Padilla by federal agents in Los Angeles, and President Trump's unprecedented deployment
01:25of the U.S. military in Los Angeles. We should hear without delay from Attorney General Bondi and FBI
01:33Director Patel about what they are doing to address the unacceptable political violence in our country,
01:39including threats to Article III judges and justices, as well as members of Congress. And we need to hear from the
01:47We need to hear from the Homeland Security Secretary Noem about the treatment of our colleague Senator Padilla and this
01:55administration's mass deportation campaign against immigrants. But instead of exercising this constitutional oversight
02:03duty, my Republican colleagues are holding this hearing. Apparently armchair diagnosing former President Biden is more
02:11important than the issues of grave concern, which I have mentioned. To take a few examples of the issues
02:18this committee committee should be addressing, the Trump administration has removed dozens of senior career
02:24prosecutors and FBI officials with decades of national security expertise, leaving our nation more vulnerable to terrorism and other national
02:34national security threats. This should be explained to this committee. The Justice Department has diverted
02:41hundreds of law enforcement agents away from combating cartels, drug trafficking and gun violence to participate in President
02:49Trump's mass deportation campaign. This should be addressed in an open hearing of this committee. The Justice
02:57Department is also turning a blind eye to corruption. The administration has gutted the Department of Justice's public
03:04integrity session, which oversees political corruption, just as the president's shameful crypto scheme unfolds. And the
03:14administration has removed Department of Justice's career ethics officials and shut down the office charged with
03:20investigating misconduct by DOJ attorneys. With these internal checks gone and this committee asleep at the wheel, it's no surprise that
03:30Attorney General Bondi signed off on President Trump to accept Qatar's gift of a $400 million luxury airliner.
03:40Despite the fact that the Attorney General was previously a registered foreign agent for the Qatari government.
03:48We are still waiting for her official finding on this gift transfer.
03:52And it's no surprise that Department of Justice official Amo Bove tried to strike a corrupt bargain with New York Mayor Eric
04:00Evans, dropping public corruption charges in exchange for the mayor's cooperation with Trump agenda mass deportations.
04:10When it comes to these historic, compelling issues, the GOP majority tells America to move along. Nothing to see here.
04:19Let's revisit this administration of a previous president in this hearing.
04:24Let's revisit a 20 year old precedent on the use of an auto pin.
04:29And I know my Republican colleagues are eager to discuss President Biden's pardons.
04:34But why are they ignoring the actual pardon crisis that's taking place right now?
04:38President Trump's pay to play scheme. Last month, President Trump pardoned Paul Walczak, who pleaded guilty in 2024 to withholding over $7 million of taxes from his employees' paychecks and failing to pay them to the Internal Revenue Service.
04:57What warranted Mr. Walczak's swift pardon by President Trump?
05:01His pardon application explicitly cited millions of dollars his mother raised for President Trump's campaigns and other efforts to support the president.
05:13But that was not enough.
05:15It was three weeks after Mr. Walczak's mother attended a million dollar a person Trump fundraiser in April this year,
05:22that Mr. Walczak was miraculously receiving his pardon, and now he no longer must pay $4.4 million to the taxpayers of this country.
05:32That's one example of the many pardons granted to President Trump's wealthy donors and political supporters.
05:38Of course, these pay-to-play pardons are in addition to more than 1,500 January 6 rioters who received blanket pardon from President Trump,
05:49including 169 who violently assaulted law enforcement officials.
05:56And we're going to make a question of cognitive ability.
06:01I think we should consider what happened in Alberta, Canada just this week,
06:04where President Trump was at a press conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and said the following,
06:13you all know the great PM of the UK and we just signed a document.
06:18President Trump continued, we just signed it so we have our trade agreement with the EU.
06:26Britain has not been a party to the EU for five years, but President Trump made a statement which clearly was wrong.
06:34Now I'd like you to see a short video that includes some other examples of cognitive ability.
06:45Don't you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?
06:48I don't know that windmills are driving the whales crazy, obviously.
06:54I have concepts of a plan.
06:57They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats, they're eating,
07:02they're eating.
07:03What I know about magnets is this, give me a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets,
07:08that's the end of the magnets.
07:09The kidney has a very special place in the heart.
07:14Right, and then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute,
07:18one minute, and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or
07:28almost a cleaning?
07:29This is a tough hurricane, one of the wettest we've ever seen from the standpoint of water.
07:35When you ran out the healthy arms, you ran out of really healthy, they had great arms,
07:42but they ran out. It's called sports, it's called baseball in particular.
07:46I can't understand a word he's saying.
07:48Did you just see Maduro?
07:50Venezuela, it's unbelievable.
07:52Well, I don't know about it. I mean, obviously, I'm not involved.
07:55He wants to know why the proclamation was signed in the dark.
07:59I don't know when it was signed, because I didn't sign it. Other people handled it.
08:03Do any of these statements raise a question of cognitive ability?
08:07You be the judge.
08:08If my colleagues are truly interested in issues of presidential succession and disability
08:14under the 25th Amendment, I would suggest they embark on this constitutional journey
08:19with a proposed amendment, not today's political adventure. I yield.
